The most important function of a website is to help a company to sell their services/products to new clients.

When potential new clients/tourists need to choose between two companies with whom they aren't familiar, they are most likely to compare the websites. This is because a website is almost the only method for a person to actually see beforehand what he/she pays for. In general, more than 90% of these potential new client's decisions are decided upon the impression that is reflected from the website, regardless of the competence of these companies. The general truth is that most potential clients do not know how to technically compare companies, and therefore trust that the website's professionalism will reflect the expertise.

Therefore large amounts are invested in corporate website development.

Unfortunately most companies tend to overlook the importance of building a trusted web presence. Without having a web presence with authority almost no new visitors will end up at your website. And since every company wants to expand, they need to focus on improving their web presence in order to increase the chance of getting new customers.

The best and most effective long term solution to increase your web presence is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It is a highly specialized field that focus on improving the amount of trust the rest of the world will have in your website. The more trust you have, the more potential new clients will visit your website daily.

The amount of trust your website has, is most of the time determined by search engines (for example Google, Yahoo, etc.). This is because the search engines have the most advanced mathematical algorithms available today, hence the acronym, SEO. Of all these search engines, the world's most accepted benchmark of website trust is known as the Google rank (or page rank) of your website. Therefore, if you could increase your Google rank, your number of new visitors to your website will most certainly increase.

Google Rank of well known organisations' home page:

4/10: Pick n Pay, Steers, KWV, News 24
5/10: Anglo Gold, Checkers, Spur, Shoprite, Nedbank, Old Mutual
6/10: Anglo American, Absa, Stellenbosch University, Telkom, MTN, Vodacom, Mobil, Virgin, Standard Bank, Die Burger, Sasol
7/10: McDonald's, Ford, General Electric, Nike, Coke
8/10: General Motors
9/10: Microsoft, eBay, Amazon
10/10: Google, Facebook

Another reason why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is so important is because of the quality of the traffic (website visitors) you receive on your website. If somebody visits your website due to a search engine query, as opposed to other reasons (such as typing in the web address/clicking on a link from another website, etc), the new visitor will most likely already be looking for your services. For example, if someone types in the word "wine" in Google, they are probably looking for wine. So if your site comes up first on Google you can probably sell a bottle of wine if your offering is satisfactory. The contrary is that the person accidentally lands on your website, but has no immediate desire for the product or services.

Please note that it is possible to buy quality traffic, but this is expensive (depending on the product value and competition) and only effective in the immediate short term i.e. while it is active. SEO has a long term cumulative effect and is relatively inexpensive to maintain once a certain level of optimisation is reached.